Horizon: It Turns Out a Lot of People Can Hear You Scream in Space

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A long time from now, in a galaxy very, very near...

By Ryan Scott

In my experience, the term “4X” is to gamers as “Dungeons & Dragons” is to everyday, tabletop role-playing non-enthusiasts. It conjures images of convoluted, esoteric activities fit only for the furthest-gone, the hardest of the hardcore. If you don't know just what the heck all those strategy grognards are talking about (hint for the uninitiated: 4X is shorthand for “explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate”), it sounds like it's more work than fun.

Me? I prefer “grand strategy” – which makes me think less of boring map hexes and more of tactical, Napoleonic world-conquering. Now doesn't that sound a lot cooler?

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Anyway, I digress; this is a weird strategy gaming subgenre, spanning everything from weird, (comparatively) niche games like Space Empires V and Dominions 3, all the way up to dazzling, turn-based epics like Civilization V and Sins of a Solar Empire. One notable sci-fi 4X epic, Master of Orion, hasn't seen the light of day since its polarizing third installment way back in 2003. Nevertheless, some folks love that series to that day -- including those at developer L3O Interactive, whose spiritual Master of Orion successor Horizon has been available via Steam Early Access since summer.

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Horizon does things its own way.

And while the really-super-final version of Horizon isn't due until the early part of 2014, 4X fans have already taken quite a liking to it, judging from Steam's official forums. It definitely checks all the boxes you might expect: a lengthy single-player campaign mode, 10 wildly varying intergalactic races, a complex technology tree, tons of socio-political-economic factors to obsess over, and tactical combat on a galactic scale. Yep, that sounds like a 4X game, doesn't it?

But Horizon does things its own way. For one – and L3O Interactive's representatives could not emphasize this enough as they proudly showed off their baby – it's an unusually story-centric 4X game. Horizon's far-future universe has a diverse political hierarchy, with a pair of ancient extraterrestrial races engaged in an eons-old chess match for control of the setting's lesser species. And while long-term campaigns have the usual array of possible endgame conditions (be it through warmongering or varying degrees of diplomacy), its open-ended mission structure throws a steady stream of unpredictability into the mix. Horizon's random missions (which usually arrive in the form of alien explorers who sit everywhere on the sliding scale of hostility) strike me as being vaguely comparable to the quests you might accept in a massively multiplayer online game, but with long-term diplomatic repercussions.

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The tech trees are also quite unique: Instead of progressing along a flat and completely predictable line of researchable technologies, Horizon nests its techs inside a half-dozen broad categories (Propulsion, Armor, Electronics, Biotech, Construction, and Weapons), and new tech emerges within the categories that you choose to specialize in. For example, you might focus on weapons – but you won't know what's at your disposal until your engineers make a breakthrough, at which point you can refine the new tech across nine increasingly potent levels. It's sort of a mixed blessing; random tech breakthroughs mean that things stay fresh and unpredictable, but they also mean that it's a bit tougher to start a campaign with a super-specific plan of attack in mind (which tends to be my preference).

But Horizon does let you customize an awful lot of stuff. For one, each of the game's ten playable races starts off with its own unique traits, aptitudes, and tech specialties, which you can modify along a point-based system. And while the campaign is designed with the human race in mind (hey, you gotta prove yourself to all these alien upstarts!), you can certainly play it with any race. And when you're off making a name for yourself in the far reaches of deep space, you've got a lot of options for how you colonize planets; your new digs can be anything from research facilities to industrial powerhouses to sinful entertainment getaways, which affects how the rest of the universe sees you.

Of course, if you come to irreconcilable disagreements, Horizon's combat system can certainly erupt on a multi-global scale, with epic, fleet-versus-fleet battles occurring all over the known universe simultaneously. I haven't quite wrapped my head around this yet, which is all the better, because I'm assured that you can achieve a campaign victory through 100% diplomacy. Now that's definitely a lofty goal in this crazy, epic game. Give it a try now on Steam Early Access if 4X is your thing; just mind the bugs.

One last important thing I learned, to my extreme disappointment: You apparently can't colonize the sun. Maybe in the expansion...

Ryan Scott is a contributing editor to IGN who used to run GameSpy. Keep up with him on Twitter or his website, Geekbox.